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Bill Cosby's "The Cosby Show" has been hailed as a transformational show in American television history because it humanized African-Americans. White America had only a handful of images of the nation's blacks: either civil rights activists or blacks were malcontents, rioting in the nation's cities. For some, the image of blacks was even worse: irresponsible, welfare queens, and drug addicts and criminals.
But the "Cosby Show" broke that paradigm: a comedic show depicting the life of an African American family brought into the homes of White America.
Today, there is no minority more vilified and feared than Muslims. Although Muslims do not face the same problems as the African American community did back them and the socioeconomic status is different, the misunderstanding is quite similar.
The image Americans have of Muslims is also highly skewed and mis-representative of the general population. Muslims are either terrorists trying to kill us or crazed fundamentalists who stone women. With such a media paradigm it is little surprise that half of Americans have a unfavorable view of Muslims.
Do Muslims need their "Cosby Show": a cultural event whereby their are ushered into the homes of Americans as normal and humanized people with the same interests, worries and loves as Americans.
It need not be a show. But something welcoming Muslims. Katie Couric, anchor of CBS Evening News, thinks so:
"I also think sort of the chasm between, or, the bigotry expressed against Muslims in this country has been one of the most disturbing stories to surface this year. Of course, a lot of noise was made about the Islamic Center, mosque, down near the World Trade Center, but I think there wasn't enough sort of careful analysis and evaluation of where this bigotry toward 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, and how this seething hatred many people feel for all Muslims, which I think is so misdirected, and so wrong--and so disappointing."
